by C. A. Larmer
His eyes narrowed. “I leave the punishing to God,” he said, then he smiled widely, his cluttered teeth reminding Jackson of a Great White. “But it looks like someone beat him to it, doesn’t it?”
“Arrgh. I need a long, hot shower now,” Indira said, shaking her limbs out as they made their way back to their car. “What a creep! I mean, I’m a big believer in karma, but that man is just plain twisted.”
Jackson agreed. “Twisted enough to take things into his own hands, do you think?”
She thought about it as she unlocked the unmarked police car and settled into the driver’s seat. “What are you saying? He was so disgusted with Kat Mumford’s frisky behaviour that he kills her for it? Bit unlikely. Creepy’s one thing, but I’m not sure he’d stoop to murder and certainly not in front of his kids.”
“And yet he took them to see a murder mystery, and all to teach them a lesson. What do you think he meant by that? And who’s Ezekiel, do you think?”
“One of his boys, I assume—poor thing.” She revved the car. “I never saw the flick. Does something happen to some naughty children?”
“Don’t know either, but I know someone who does.”
He clicked in his seat belt and reached for his mobile phone.
“Oh, wow, yeah, that is creepy,” Alicia said, soon after Jackson had reached her at work and made his enquiry.
A journalist by trade, Alicia had been deep in concentration, editing an online article about vegan Instagram stars, and was happy for the distraction. All the bright images of watermelon and quinoa salad were making her hungry—and not for watermelon and quinoa salad. She could go for a greasy hamburger and fries and suggested as much to Jackson.
“I wish,” he said, glancing across to Indira, who was hissing under her breath at a slow driver in front. “Still got a bit to get through before we break for lunch.”
“Fair enough. Okay, so there’s a teenage girl called Linda in the book, right? She’s also in the movie. She’s the stepdaughter of the murdered woman, and they loathe each other. In the book, Linda turns to some voodoo to try to kill her stepmum and, believing she’s succeeded, ends up attempting suicide. But none of that appears in the film version. That’s probably why he was disgruntled. Creep.”
“And Ezekiel?”
“I think that was the name of the oldest kid. A boy. He looked about fourteen or fifteen, bored, embarrassed. Your typical teenager.”
After hanging up, Jackson repeated Alicia’s words to Indira, adding, “So it sounds to me like he deliberately chose to take his children, one as young as five or six I might add, to a movie thinking they would get to watch a teenager try to kill herself. A lovely little life lesson for the kiddies.”
“Oh what a nasty piece of work.” Indira pulled the car up at the lights. “‘Divine retribution’ I believe were his exact words.” She mock shivered. “I seriously feel sorry for those kids.”
“Do you think he had it in him to lean in and extinguish a life?”
She shrugged. “He certainly had an air of the psychopath about him.” She tapped the steering wheel. “Although fondling the victim first seems a stretch. As for the thefts…”
Jackson chewed on a thumbnail and watched the traffic flow. “I want to speak to his wife, see what she has to say.”
“Good idea although I have a feeling she’ll just back up the husband. From what the other witnesses say, she was the meek kind. Despite his gruff complaints, no one heard her utter a word. Except at the lines to the Portaloos, then she made all the kids pray. Talk about embarrassing! I’d curl up and die if my mother made me pray in public like that.”
He laughed. “Yeah, bad enough just hanging out in public with your folks. Still…”
He wished they’d asked about the wife and wondered how they could get hold of her without him knowing. Jackson had a hunch she’d be more forthcoming without the pious pastor lurking nearby.
“What about the two women who were part of the organising committee, Florence Underwood and Veronica Someone-or-other?” Indira said. “It was Mrs Underwood who noticed the mother praying. Maybe she saw something else that could help us.”
“Good idea. Know where we can find them?”
She nodded, then checked her iPhone. “But you’ll have to face them alone. Jarrod’s just texted. Kat Mumford’s parents have arrived from Perth. They’re distraught—as you would expect.” She sighed. “I’d better get back. Face the music.”
“Want me to join you?”
“Nah, I’ve got this one. Besides, I have a feeling the old ladies would prefer you all to themselves.”
Jackson wasn’t sure whether to be flattered by that comment or frightened.
Chapter 12
The headquarters of the Balmain Ladies Auxiliary was located at the far western end of the small Balmain park, in a crumbling brick mews that had also been donated by Dame Nellie Johnson’s family many years earlier.
The club had cleaned it out and freshened it up and now used it as their base to raise funds for park maintenance and other more worthy causes.
The place was bustling with life when Detective Jackson creaked open the large barn door, causing the lively banter to come to a grinding halt as every face swung in his direction, most eyes bespectacled, all with raised eyebrows above. They didn’t see many people under the age of sixty at their weekly gathering, let alone men or cops.
Recognising him immediately, Florence Underwood waved to Jackson and ushered him across.
“Here’s the handsome police detective I was telling you all about,” she said to the curious onlookers.
“Welcome, handsome police detective,” someone called out.
“Care for a cup of tea and a biscuit?” someone else offered.
“I’m good, thank you,” he replied, pulling up a pew—a literal church pew, mind you—and sitting beside Florence. She had a ball of wool and some knitting needles in front of her.
“We’re knitting beanies and scarves for the poor refugee children to keep them warm next winter,” she said, and he felt a pang of sadness.
Here was one group of people offering comfort to children they had never met; it contrasted starkly with the behaviour of the so-called family man he had just left.
“We’re still so shocked by the dreadful incident at the film night last Sat-dee,” said a woman beside Flo, a skinny thing with a bright yellow cardigan.
“It was our very first moonlight cinema,” said another woman, a larger lady to her right. “We’ve got another one planned in a fortnight. We’re supposed to be showing Grease. What if the reprobate comes back and does it again?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jackson said. “I’m hoping you can help me solve this thing.”
“We’ll do everything we can, Detective,” said Florence. “Won’t we, ladies?”
There was a fervent nodding of heads before most of the women returned to chatting about other things, their needles clickity clacking away, like a chirpy soundtrack around them.
Jackson turned to Florence. “How are you holding up, Mrs Underwood?”
“Flo, please. And I’m perfectly fine, young man, don’t you worry about me. You don’t get to my age without seeing one or two dead people, I can tell you that. I’m just glad those beautiful young children beside me had left before it all got too gruesome.”
“That’s exactly why I’m here, Flo. I’d like to see how they’re doing, maybe chat to their mother. I know you had some information on her the other night. Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?”
She looked down at her ball of wool and began to knit. Jackson wondered for a moment if she had not heard him, but it was soon clear she was giving it some thought.
“Her name evades me,” she said eventually, “something odd, I know that. Well, they were both odd, really. Him more than her.”
“You mean Reverend Jacob Joves?”
She looked up at him. “So you’ve tracked him down then?”
H
e nodded.
“But you want to chat to her separately, yes, smart move, that.”
Jackson smiled. She was savvy, this one. He wondered if she wanted to join a book club. Flo continued knitting for another minute or so.
“Right, well they all had biblical names, I remember that. There was a Hannah and a Zemira and, oh, I can’t remember the older child’s name.”
“Ezekiel?” he suggested, and she nodded.
“That’s it. Ezekiel. He looked a bit glum that poor lad. Bit like my eldest grandson whenever he comes to stay. You just know they’d rather stab themselves in the eye than hang out with us oldies.” She cackled at that. “But now, what was the wife’s name; it was something strange…” She continued frantically knitting. “Something sinister…” She looked up with a start, causing her spectacles to slip down her nose. She pushed them back and smiled. “Azaria! That’s right. I kept thinking of that poor child who was taken by that dingo up in the Northern Territory. You know the one, back in the 1980s?”
He nodded. “Azaria Chamberlain. So Mrs Joves’s name was Azaria, you think?”
“I’m sure of it. And I can go one better for you if you like.”
“I do like. What have you got?”
She cackled. “I believe the oldest lad goes to St Matt’s, the Anglican school in Drummoyne. If you’re clever, you might catch her picking him up from school one day.”
Jackson smiled. Flo Underwood was really growing on him. “And how do you know that, Flo?”
“He had a backpack with him with the school emblazoned across it.” She smiled smugly. “I know the place well, Detective. Several of my grandchildren have been through it. Not a bad school as far as schools go, quite strict, but not so strict that they take all the fun out of life.” She frowned. “Unlike that father of his. He was certainly the fun police that one!”
She cackled again.
“You didn’t happen to notice anything about the two men who were sitting to the right of the deceased? Two men in caps who were drinking a lot of beer?”
“Oh yes, they were a rough sort, I know that. But they didn’t give me a second glance, of course. I’m invisible to men now I’m afraid.” Then she shrugged as though it didn’t bother her a jot. “But let me think…” She went into one of her knitting frenzies again, and Jackson glanced around, catching the eye of another lady, this one very tall, with a helmet of stiff, dyed-brown hair.
“You should ask young Brandon!” the woman called out. “He was the one selling the drinks. He’ll be able to help.”
She had obviously been listening in, and now Flo was nodding.
“Oh you’re right, Alice, thanks for that. Yes, Officer, Brandon Johnson’s your man.”
“He worked the bar that night?”
She was nodding. “Him and his team. He’s been at a bit of a loose end since his mother passed.”
“Poor Dana, bless her soul,” someone else said, and there was a communal sigh.
“Gone far too young,” agreed Flo. “Such a waste; such a tragedy. Now, I wonder where you might find Brandon at this hour.” She glanced around again. “Alice? Alice! Sorry to disturb again, dear. Any idea where we’d find young Brandon today?”
“Top Shop I reckon, usually works there during the week.”
“Oh of course, yes.” Flo turned back to Jackson, who was just about to ask the question she was answering. “Top Shop’s the trendy coffee shop up on the corner of High Street and Beattie, I think it is. Five smackeroos for a cup of Joe! Five, can you believe it?”
“That’s cheap for Sydney,” Jackson said, and she gulped.
“It’s daylight robbery is what it is, Detective. You should lock them up while you’re at it.” Then her lips drooped south. “I really don’t understand the current fascination with those newfangled coffee machines. You can buy three-month’s worth of instant coffee for the price of a cup-oo-chino, and it tastes just as good if you ask me. Anyway, dear, Brandon’s your man. He would have been serving those lads their beers; he might know something.”
The detective glanced at his watch, then thanked her for her time and threw out a group thank-you to the other women in the room. They waved and smiled back, and he could have sworn he heard a soft wolf whistle and a couple more cackles as the front door creaked behind him.
*********
“Get anything from our ladies down at the mews?” Indira asked after he had returned to the station where she found him in the communal kitchen, staring forlornly at a tin of the aforementioned instant coffee.
“You mean apart from a cheeky wolf whistle?”
She scoffed. “You’re not that hot, Jacko.”
He let that slide as he relayed his conversation with Flo and her friends.
“I think this Brandon Johnson could be a good lead. Barmen see everything at those events, and if my memory serves, the bar was not too far from where Kat Mumford was lying.”
“We spoke to all the bar staff that night and again over the weekend. Don’t recall a Brandon.”
“You should have. They tell me he ran the bar.”
“Did he now? Hm, that’s funny. I recall a Mayan and a Wally, a Jacki and a Lin, but no Brandon. Know where we can find him?”
“I know just the place.”
He dropped the tinned coffee back onto the bench and added, “And we can grab an overpriced cup-oo-chino while we’re there.”
Fifteen minutes later, the two detectives had found the café but not the barman. And they’d abandoned all thought of ordering a coffee. The queue for the takeaway coffee bar snaked through the café, out the door and onto the street.
“Brandon’s usually here,” a flustered-looking barista told them. “But he cancelled today. Swapped with Wally, I think.”
“Wally Walters?” Indira asked, causing Jackson’s eyebrows to rise.
The barista shrugged. He didn’t have a clue what Wally’s last name was—nobody used last names around this place—but it didn’t matter. Indira had spotted Wally working a table on one side.
“He was also on bar duty at the cinema that Saturday,” she told Jackson as they made their way across.
“Very cosy,” Jackson said.
“Convenient too.”
Once Wally had finished scribbling on his pad, Indira introduced herself, then allowed him to place the order in the kitchen before insisting he stop for a chat. The café manager, a man with a large bushranger beard and weary look about him, was not impressed, but their badges trumped the lunchtime rush, so he begrudgingly gave the waiter ten minutes off.
“But take it out the back,” he said. “Don’t need to scare the customers away.”
How many do you need? thought Jackson as they battled their way through the crowded café, which was furnished with beat-up leather lounges, retro lamps, and dusty oil paintings. It was your classic hipster hang, and the clientele all appeared styled to suit—most in vintage clothing, baggy beanies, thick glasses and beards.
Jackson glanced around, sadly, knowing the victim would have felt right at home in this place. He hadn’t known Kat Mumford, of course, didn’t recall much about her from Saturday night, but all his victims brought a lump to his throat. Older colleagues had told him he would toughen up eventually—“get used to it”—but he found that he hadn’t. If anything, he felt each death more keenly with each passing year.
He wondered if that made him a better person or a lesser cop, or both.
“I told you guys everything the other night,” Wally was saying as he led them through the back door and out to a set of tables near the toilets. He sat down at one and reached for a packet of cigarettes he’d stashed in his apron pocket. As he lit up, Indira noticed his hand shaking a little, and she wondered why.
Was he scared of cops, as many people naturally are, or was it something else?
“We’re actually here to see Brandon Johnson,” she said. “You don’t happen to know where he is, do you?”
That didn’t seem to soothe his nerves
any, and he began tapping the box on the table, his knee jerking up and down in his seat. “No, no. No, I haven’t. Why would I?”
He wasn’t meeting their eyes.
“Well he must have called you to take his shift,” Jackson said, also picking up on the tension. “Did he tell you why he couldn’t make it in today, where he was calling from, perhaps?”
Wally shook his head quickly.
“So what did he say?”
“Nothin’. Just could I do his shift? I need the cash, so I said yes. That was it.”
“And you worked with him on Saturday night, at the film in Balmain?” Indira asked.
He hesitated, dragged on his smoke again, then nodded.
“And Brandon was the one who ran the operation, yes?”
“The operation?”
“He was the one in charge of the Booze Bar that night?”
Another hesitation, then, “Sure. Yeah.”
Indira sighed. “So here’s the thing, Mr Walters. I don’t recall interviewing any Brandon Johnson on Saturday night. Which means he wasn’t there when my officers arrived. Any idea why?”
He shrugged. “Think he had to leave early.”
“You think?”
Wally was having trouble meeting her eyes again. “Yeah, he, um, had something to get to. Asked if I could take over.”
“Is that situation normal for him? Running out on a big job like that?” Wally shrugged. “It’s just that usually the man in charge remains there until the end. So why the sudden exit?”
“Dunno, you’d have to ask him that.”
“Oh we will,” said Jackson. “You can be sure of that. He left the scene of a crime. That’s a pretty serious thing.” He leaned in closer. “So is aiding and abetting somebody who leaves the scene of a crime.”
It wasn’t strictly a hanging offence, but this nervous Nellie didn’t need to know that. It had the desired effect, and now Wally had stopped twitching and was staring at them, gobsmacked.